Integrating design and production planning considerations in multi-bay manufacturing facility layout

This paper develops a new mathematical model that integrates layout design and production planning to prescribe efficient multi-bay manufacturing facilities. The model addresses the need to distribute department replicas throughout the facility and extends the use of product and process requirements as problem parameters in order to increase process routing flexibility. In addition, the model allows for the consideration of practical material handling and production features such as alternate process routings, product flow production patterns, and department replica capacities. Computational results demonstrate that the run time required to solve our test problems is quite acceptable given the long-term nature of facility layout decisions. Moreover, comparative results indicate that department replication can reduce material movement significantly while maintaining the existing production capacity.     

Layout design for flexible manufacturing systems considering single-loop directional flow patterns

To achieve high productivity in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS), an efficient layout arrangement and material flow path design are important due to the large percentage of product cost that is related to material handling. The layout design problem addressed in this paper has departments with fixed shapes and pick-up/drop-off points. It is an open-field type layout with single-loop directed flow path. A two-step heuristic is proposed to solve the problem. It first solves a traditional block layout with directed-loop flow path to minimize material handling costs by using a combined spacefilling curve and simulated annealing algorithm. The second step of the proposed methodology uses the resulting flow sequence and relative positioning information from the first step as input to solve the detailed FMS layout, which includes the spatial coordinates and orientation of each FMS cell. This detailed FMS layout problem is formulated and solved as a mixed integer program. Empirical illustrations show promising results for the proposed methodology in solving real-world type problems.     

Covering and connectivity constraints in loop-based formulation of material flow network design in facility layout

The shortest loop covering at least one edge of each workcenter in a manufacturing facility layout is an instance of the generalized traveling salesman problem. The optimal solution to this problem is a promising design for non-vehicle-based material handling, typical of most types of conveyors and power-and-free systems, where the length of the path is the main driver of the total investment costs. The loop formulation is usually embedded within a larger problem of the concurrent design of the loop and the input/output stations for vehicle-based material handling typical of automatically guided vehicles and autonomous delivery robots. In these systems, it is not the length, but the total flow of the loaded and empty vehicles that drives the objective function. It has been shown that the shortest loop provides an effective heuristic scheme to achieve prosperous and robust solutions for the concurrent design of the loop and input/output stations. We review and compare covering constraints formulations, provide new insight into connectivity constraints, improve the model formulation and its solution procedure, and report computational results.     

Layout designs in cellular manufacturing

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is now an established international practice to integrate: equipment, people, and systems into `focused factories', `mini-businesses' or `cells' with clear customers, responsibilities and boundaries. The major elements in exploiting the benefits of CM is efficient layout designs. This paper presents the application of recently developed multi-objective inter- and intra-cell layout designs methodologies in a CM environment by the author to a dynamic food manufacturing and packaging company in Australia. Some of the problems expressed by the company were large and unnecessary volume of shop floor material handling cost, difficulties and confusion over production planning, long products lead times resulting in losing customers and high overhead costs. Furthermore the company was deeply concerned about the increasing number of accidents and injuries on the shop floor caused by poor layout of machinery and the lack of proper aisle structures for movement of the lift-trucks. This paper shows the process of developing the final inter-cell layout designs by providing the management with multiple layout configurations and showing the impact of each design on the material handling cost at each stage. These solutions not only provide a safer shop floor but also significant reductions in material handling cost, waste, need for large capital investment and the number of lift-trucks needed on the shop floor.     

制造单元布局问题的双目标模型与算法研究

单元制造系统的布局对于提高系统的效率起着十分重要的作用。以最小化物料周转量和设施面积为目标,建立了一个单元制造系统布局的双目标优化模型,在该模型中不同制造单元的布局、单元内部不同设施的位置与方向这几个问题可以同时进行优化。基于模拟退火邻域解的变尺度生成机制和双目标抽样准则设计了模型的求解算法。算例表明本文算法所得Pareto解集优于经典的NSGA-Ⅱ算法。     

主通道位置不固定的设施布局问题多目标优化模型及算法

以物流中心设施布局问题为对象,提出了考虑出入口及主通道位置不固定情况下的设施布局问题的多目标优化模型并设计了其改进的遗传算法。首先,以物料搬运成本最小、活动关系密切度最大和面积利用率最大为目标,构建了考虑出入口位置不固定条件下的具有I型主通道的设施布局多目标优化数学模型。然后,设计了一种改进的遗传算法,包括:改进的编码、解码方法,追加了解码修正操作,基于惩罚函数策略的适应度函数等。实例测试表明,本算法的执行效率高而且结果稳定,优化效果好,布局结果紧凑适用。     

基于弹性区带架构的多目标设施布局问题研究

为解决设施面积不等的连续型设施布局问题,建立了基于弹性区带架构布置形式,以物料搬运成本最小、邻近关系最大、距离要求满足度最大的多目标设施布局模型。模型中考虑了区域内的横向、纵向过道,对设施的长宽比进行了限制,使得结果更符合实际情况。为克服传统多目标单一化方法需要人为设置子目标函数权重、主观性过强的缺陷,采用基于带有精英保留策略的非支配排序遗传算法(NSGA Ⅱ)的多目标优化算法求解模型,设计了相应的编码方式、交叉算子、变异算子、罚函数。最后通过某物流园区的实例分析证明了模型与方法的有效性。     

Flexible machine layout design for dynamic and uncertain production environments

Flexible manufacturing systems operate in a dynamic environment and face considerable uncertainty in production demands. The development of a flexible machine layout is a critical issue in creating a system that can respond effectively to these requirements. Unlike most existing methods for creating flexible layout designs, the procedure developed in this paper is not restricted to equal size machines. It optimizes the trade-offs between increased material handling costs as requirements change and machine rearrangement costs needed to adapt the layout to these changes. The proposed flexible machine layout design procedure formulates and solves a robust machine layout design problem over a rolling horizon planning time window. The formulation, details of the solution methodology, illustrative examples, and computational results are presented.     

A novel approach for considering layout problem in cellular manufacturing systems with alternative processing routings and subcontracting approach

In this paper a new integrated approach is presented for designing cellular manufacturing system and its inter- and intra-cell layouts. Various production factors such as part demands, alternative processing routings, operation sequences, processing times, capacity of machines, etc. are incorporated in the problem in order to extend its applicability. To increase the accuracy of the inter- and intra-cell layout design, the material handling cost is calculated in terms of the actual position of machines within the cells and regarding the dimensions of the machines and aisle distances. Also, a subcontracting approach is proposed to determine the production volume of parts within the CF and layout design process regarding the production, material handling and outsourcing costs and under demand and machine capacity constraints. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that addresses all these design features simultaneously. As the proposed problem is NP-hard, an efficient GA is employed to solve it. Finally, numerical examples adopted from the literature are used to verify the proposed approach.     

Exact and heuristic procedures for the material handling circular flow path design problem

In this study we develop optimization, decomposition, and heuristic procedures to design a unidirectional loop flow pattern along with the pickup and delivery station locations for unit load automated material handling vehicles. The layout of the facility is fixed, the edges on the boundary of the manufacturing cells are candidates to form the unidirectional loop flow path, and a set of nodes located at an intermediate point on each edge are candidates for pickup and delivery stations of the cell formed by those edges. The objective is to minimize the total loaded and empty vehicle trip distances. The empty vehicle dispatching policy underlying the model is the shortest trip distance first. A binary integer programming model describes the problem of determining the flow path and locations of the pickup and delivery stations in which we then provide a decomposition procedure based on a loop enumeration strategy coupled with a streamlined integer linear programming model. It is shown that only a small proportion of all loops have to be enumerated to reach an optimum. Therefore a truncated version of this algorithm should yield a good heuristic. Finally we propose a neighbourhood search heuristic method and report on its performance.     

A convex optimisation framework for the unequal-areas facility layout problem

The unequal-areas facility layout problem is concerned with finding the optimal arrangement of a given number of non-overlapping indivisible departments with unequal area requirements within a facility. We present a convex-optimisation-based framework for efficiently finding competitive solutions for this problem. The framework is based on the combination of two mathematical programming models. The first model is a convex relaxation of the layout problem that establishes the relative position of the departments within the facility, and the second model uses semidefinite optimisation to determine the final layout. Aspect ratio constraints, frequently used in facility layout methods to restrict the occurrence of overly long and narrow departments in the computed layouts, are taken into account by both models. We present computational results showing that the proposed framework consistently produces competitive, and often improved, layouts for well-known large instances when compared with other approaches in the literature.     

The facility layout problem

In this paper, the facility layout problem is surveyed. Various formulations of the facility layout problem and the algorithms for solving this problem are presented. Twelve heuristic algorithms are compared on the basis of their performance with respect to eight test problems commonly used in the literature. Certain issues related to the facility layout problem and some aspects of the machine layout problem in flexible manufacturing systems are also presented.     

Heuristics for the dynamic facility layout problem with unequal-area departments

The dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP) is the problem of finding positions of departments on the plant floor for multiple periods (material flows between departments change during the planning horizon) such that departments do not overlap, and the sum of the material handling and rearrangement costs is minimized. In this paper, the departments may have unequal-areas and free orientations, and the layout for each period is generated on the continuous plant floor. Because of the complexity of the problem, only small-size problems can be solved in reasonable time using exact techniques. As a result, a boundary search (construction) technique, which places departments along the boundaries of already placed departments, is developed for the DFLP. The solution is improved using a tabu search heuristic. The heuristics were tested on some instances from the DFLP and static facility layout problem (SFLP) literature. The results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the heuristics.     

A genetic algorithm for cellular manufacturing design and layout

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is an approach that can be used to enhance both flexibility and efficiency in today’s small-to-medium lot production environment. The design of a CM system (CMS) often involves three major decisions: cell formation, group layout, and group schedule. Ideally, these decisions should be addressed simultaneously in order to obtain the best results. However, due to the complexity and NP-complete nature of each decision and the limitations of traditional approaches, most researchers have only addressed these decisions sequentially or independently. In this study, a hierarchical genetic algorithm is developed to simultaneously form manufacturing cells and determine the group layout of a CMS. The intrinsic features of our proposed algorithm include a hierarchical chromosome structure to encode two important cell design decisions, a new selection scheme to dynamically consider two correlated fitness functions, and a group mutation operator to increase the probability of mutation. From the computational analyses, these proposed structure and operators are found to be effective in improving solution quality as well as accelerating convergence.     

Optimal and Heuristic Procedures for Row Layout Problems in Automated Manufacturing Systems

In many automated manufacturing environments, particularly flowlines and flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs), machines are arranged along a straight material handling track with a material handling device moving jobs from one machine to aother. These layouts are referred to as row machine layouts. In this paper we study the Row Layout Problem (RLP) under the design objective of minimizing the total backtracking distance of the material handling device, which is a NP-complete problem. We propose the use of a dynamic programming algorithm for its solution. Special cases of the problem, usually encountered in flexible manufacturing cells and which can be solved with polynomial procedures, are also discussed. For the equidistant case (i.e., successive candidate locations are in equal distances), we formulate the problem as an integer linear program. The use of standard mathematical programming codes can efficiently solve this formulation. Two effective heuristic procedures, which explore simple ideas based on local optimality conditions, are also presented. Extensive computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of such heuristics.     

Single- and multi-objective facility layout with workflow interference considerations

The effect of workflow interference is a major concern in facility layout design. Yet, despite the extensive amount of research conducted on the facility layout problem, very little has been done to incorporate interference as part of an overall approach to layout design. This paper examines the impact of workflow interference considerations on facility layout analyses. Linear and nonlinear integer programming formulations of the problem are presented. The structural properties of the resulting formulations, as applied to facility design, are investigated. Finally, a multi-objective approach to facility layout design is presented, incorporating the traditional distance-based objective with that of workflow interference.     

Operational research and material handling

A number of material handling research areas are reviewed and opportunities for further research are identified. Included in the review is a consideration of the following areas: robotics, conveyor theory, transfer lines, flexible manufacturing systems, equipment selection, storage alternatives, automated storage and retrieval systems, warehouse layout, palletizing, and order picking and accumulation.     

A spring-embedding approach for the facility layout problem

The facility layout problem is concerned with finding the most efficient arrangement of a given number of departments with unequal area requirements within a facility. The facility layout problem is a hard problem, and therefore, exact solution methods are only feasible for small or greatly restricted problems. In this paper, we propose a spring-embedding approach that unlike previous approaches results in a model that is convex. Numerical results demonstrating the potential of our model and the efficiency of our solution procedure are presented.     

Ant Colony Optimisation for Machine Layout Problems

Flexible machine layout problems describe the dynamic arrangement of machines to optimise the trade-off between material handling and rearrangement costs under changing and uncertain production environments. A previous study used integer-programming techniques to solve heuristically reduced versions of the problem. As an alternative, this paper introduces an ant colony optimisation (ACO) algorithm to generate good solutions. Experimental results are presented, with ACO obtaining better solutions than the reduction heuristic.     

An improved two-stage optimization-based framework for unequal-areas facility layout

The unequal-areas facility layout problem is concerned with finding the optimal arrangement of a given number of non-overlapping indivisible departments with unequal area requirements within a facility. We present an improved optimization-based framework for efficiently finding competitive solutions for this problem. The framework is based on the combination of two mathematical optimization models. The first model is a nonlinear approximation of the problem that establishes the relative position of the departments within the facility, and the second model is an exact convex optimization formulation of the problem that determines the final layout. Aspect ratio constraints on the departments are taken into account by both models. Our computational results show that the proposed framework is computationally efficient and consistently produces competitive, and often improved, layouts for well-known instances from the literature as well as for new large-scale instances with up to 100 departments.